Music

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Comment by Reid Hyams on April 27, 2009 at 7:44am

I'm looking forward to this being a progressive, proactive, aggressive and creative music group within the Chicago music community. There are other music professionals, groups and organizations in Chicago and it is in this groups best interest to cross pollinate. The industry is rapidly changing and as we all know has serious problems. But, they can be overcome in time. One problem that exists is the Chicago music community must band together as one, and promote our scene to the rest of the country and internationally. We have one of the best and most diverse music scenes in the world today! We must go out and everyone aware of that! That's my two cents.

Comment by Michael Nehs on April 22, 2009 at 8:28am

Am I on the sound convergence? I just learned about this last week at the meeting.

Comment by Rachael Cain on April 22, 2009 at 8:18am

Will members of the Sound Convergence PLEASE CONTACT ME? I am working on the event and need to gather your input.

Comment by Karen E. Pride on March 30, 2009 at 6:47am

Greetings. I facilitate a drop-in group called the Chicago Independent Artists Network (CIAN). We meet on the second Tuesday of the month at Wishbone Restaurant, 3300 N. Lincoln Blvd., near Belmont/Ashland, from 7-8:30 p.m. The Network consists of student and professional filmmakers, writers, musicians, actors, videographers, photographers, caterers, artists...anything to do with creative arts. Our mission is to keep you creative people working in Chicago through networking opportunities. If you're interested, please contact me at ciankaren@gmail.com.

Comment by Bruce Eric Montgomery on October 2, 2008 at 2:39pm

Nokia Launches Pioneering 'Comes With Music' Digital Entertainment Service

New Service Offers Customers Unprecedented Freedom and Value
EMI Music, Independents and Music Publishers Join Offering


CHICAGO - Nokia Remix, October 2 -- At the Nokia Remix event held today in London and Singapore, Nokia (NYSE: NOK) announced the debut of its pioneering Comes with Music digital entertainment service which offers consumers a new way to discover and enjoy music. Customers who buy a Comes With Music device will be able to explore and enjoy a diverse catalog of music of international and local artists with unlimited access to millions of tracks for a year, keeping the music once the year is over and revolutionizing their digital music experience.

"Comes With Music sets a precedent for consumer value and convenience that the rest of the digital entertainment industry is already copying," said Tero Ojanpera, executive vice president and head of the Nokia entertainment and communities business. "Trying out a music recommendation is spontaneous as customers can download without worrying about the cost of an album or a track - the freedom and simplicity of the service is unparalleled. And Comes With Music gives you unlimited access to the millions of tracks in the Nokia Music Store and the music is all yours to keep - because it's not a revolution unless you get to keep your music."

Comes With Music offers one year of unlimited access to the entire Nokia Music Store catalogue and customers can keep all the music that they have downloaded at the end of the year to continue enjoying their music collection. Comes With Music will be available across a range of Nokia devices, including the new Nokia 5800 XpressMusic - also announced today and the Nokia N95 8GB and Nokia 5310 XpressMusic. With more than 10 million units sold globally since its introduction last year, the Nokia 5310 XpressMusic is the best selling music phone in the world.

EMI Music has joined as the latest major label to support Comes With Music.

"With the launch of Nokia's Comes With Music, fans now have a new avenue to find and enjoy music from EMI's catalogue, and our artists have a powerful new way to reach their fans," said Douglas Merrill, president, digital business, for EMI Music. "By encouraging music discovery in an innovative and consumer-friendly environment, Comes With Music will continue to push experimentation in the digital music industry."

Comes With Music will also feature a tremendous selection of independent music, courtesy of deals with The Orchard (NASD: ORCD), Beggars Group, IODA, the Ministry of Sound, PIAS and Pinnacle. These companies join Universal Music Group, Sony BMG Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group in supporting Comes With Music. Nokia has also secured music publishing rights from CELAS on behalf of EMI Music Publishing, GEMA on behalf of Sony/ATV Music Publishing, SACEM on behalf of Universal Music Publishing, as well as the MCPS-PRS Alliance.

http://www.nokia.com/comeswithmusic

For multimedia material on the Nokia Remix, please visit http://events.nokia.com

Comment by Bruce Eric Montgomery on September 28, 2008 at 5:14pm

The Summer Ain't Over Just Yet! Let's Meetup and talk Convergence!

Museum of Contemporary Art, Tuesday, September 30, 5:30-8 pm

Join me for the last Tuesday on the Terrace, of the season of free evening jazz concert on the MCA's Anne and John Kern Terrace overlooking Lake Michigan.

Enjoy cocktails while listening to Chicago's finest jazz musicians, hosted by local radio personalities.

In addition to a buffet dinner, Puck's cafe also offers other picnic options, perfect for those who prefer to relax on the sculpture garden lawn.

http://www.mcachicago.org/programs/event_detail.php?id=22

Bruce Montgomery 773-410-0608 tatvshow@yahoo.com

http://facebook.dj/tatv/

Comment by Bruce Eric Montgomery on September 25, 2008 at 8:23am

MySpace tries to strike new chord in digital music

By Michael Liedtke, AP Technology Writer

MySpace, major labels launch joint venture, hoping to strike new chord in digital music

CHICAGO (AP) -- Make room, iTunes. MySpace is hoping to shake up the digital music scene. In a bid to spruce up its popular online hangout, MySpace plans to flip the switch Thursday on a much-anticipated service that will give its roughly 120 million users free access to hundreds of thousands of songs from the world's largest recording labels.

The catch: the music can be played only on personal computers connected to the Internet and listeners have to tolerate advertising splashed across the screen. Anyone who wants to transfer a song to a portable device like Apple Inc.'s iPod will have to buy the music through Amazon.com Inc.'s year-old downloading service, which sells songs for as little as 79 cents apiece.

Unlike much of the material at Apple's iTunes store, the music sold through MySpace's new service won't contain the protections that limit how many times a track can be copied.

MySpace is hoping to set itself apart from iTunes even further by allowing its users to create an unlimited number of playlists containing up to 100 songs apiece -- a sharing concept similar to music services already offered by Imeem and Last.fm.

If MySpace's plan pans out, people will regularly post different playlists on their profiles and expose their friends to new music.

The recording labels are betting these implicit recommendations will cultivate more interest in more songs and eventually generate revenue to help recoup some of the revenue that has evaporated as CD sales have plunged from $12 billion in 1999 to a projected $5 billion this year.

"We have to unlock the social value of our music," said Michael Nash, executive vice president of digital strategy and business development for Warner Music Group Inc.

Besides Warner, the three other major recording labels -- Sony BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and EMI Music -- also are opening up their libraries to the MySpace service, which will operate as a joint venture with the music industry. Sony ATV/Music Publishing and The Orchard also have joined the MySpace alliance.

MySpace is starting with several hundred thousand songs, but expects to surpass the size of Apple's iTunes store, which stocks 8.5 million songs.

"When all is said and done, we will have the richest catalog of content on the Internet," boasted Amit Kapur, MySpace's chief operating officer.

The music labels are hoping that the MySpace service can lessen the dominance of iTunes, which has sold more than 5 billion songs since its 2003 inception and now ranks as the largest music retailer. Apple has vexed the music industry by refusing to allowing higher prices to be charged for the most popular songs.

Several other services, mostly peddling monthly subscription fees for access to large music libraries, have tried to tackle iTunes with little success. The list of foiled challengers include Yahoo Music, RealNetworks Inc.'s Rhapsody and Napster Inc., which this month agreed to be acquired by Best Buy Co. for $121 million.

The difficulty developing a major alternative to iTunes hasn't seemed to discourage the music labels yet. Rio Caraeff, who heads Universal Music's digital efforts, predicted services similar to the MySpace joint venture will sprout at other social networks.

"We know there is a large portion of people who love music but don't want to buy music," Caraeff said. "We have to figure out a new business model that serves that audience while providing remuneration for the labels and the artists."

MySpace appears to be in a better position to take on iTunes because its site has always emphasized music. About 5 million bands and singers have MySpace accounts, and two-third of its users stream music on their profiles.

In MySpace's early years, the music industry lashed out at the site as a haven for pirated songs. Universal Music even sued MySpace for copyright infringement; the case was settled in April to open the door for the new joint venture.

Despite its musical bent, MySpace isn't positioning its service as an iTunes killer. "We see this as more of a complement to what Apple is doing and create even more demand for digital music devices," said Chris DeWolfe, MySpace's CEO. "And we think it can create an ecosystem for both music artists and labels to make more money."

As it tries to become a hot spot for sharing and hearing music, MySpace also hopes to sell more brand-driven advertising and establish its Web site as the go-to spot for buying concert tickets and music merchandise.

The strategy is another prong in MySpace's efforts to drum up more online revenue for Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate, News Corp., which bought the site for $580 million in 2005.

McDonald's Corp., State Farm Insurance, Toyota Motor Corp. and Sony Pictures are sponsoring the music service's launch.

Comment by Noleian on September 20, 2008 at 5:24pm

Although fans and listeners have benefited from the ease of access and wide variety of choices online, artists are getting a smaller and smaller cut of the sales. I'd like to see an easy to use platform that allows artists to sell directly to the consumer with artist buy in opportunities for wide scale advertising, promo. etc.

Comment by Juliette Tworsey on September 13, 2008 at 4:05pm

Bruce,

This is a very interesting and thorough thread! It makes me remember once, not too long ago, I posed a similar question (like Brown's) to a high ranking lable person who was sitting on a panel at a music biz class at UCLA; he just sort of looked at me in a slightly perplexed, but intrigued way, as if to say hmm, not a bad idea; if of course, we don't tick off the middle men that we are currently working with in midst of the transition.

Putting the control back in the hands of owners of musical content could usher in the beginning of a turn-around for our industry. Now, I say this as an indie artist. My philosophy is this: If the labels do well, they will take more risks, thus resulting in more choices for consumers. Additionally, this would have a trickle down effect by allowing for smaller labels to also become more profitable, and then maybe I'll have a career:) Yay!! We'll see!! Thanks for a thought provoking thread.

Comment by Bruce Eric Montgomery on September 11, 2008 at 12:50pm

Record Compaines Pump Digital Jams!

Music is breaking out all over.

MySpace Music said it will launch a site this month that will help music companies manage their catalogs online. Labels are getting a new groove, too: Universal Music's Polydor Records is prepping an enhanced version of the band Snow Patrol's upcoming album, A Hundred Million Suns, for distribution as an Apple iPhone application. The program will link fans to videos and other behind-the-scenes content.

Next up could be Warner Music, which Forbes.com has learned has a project in the works that could help promote and sell its music library directly to customers.

The music companies may be growing up, with enthusiasm for the Internet driven in part by both envy of the success of Apple's iTunes store--which has sold over 5 billion songs since it opened in 2003--and by fear of losing customers to the computer company turned music kingpin.

Embracing the online world is a big switch for the $10 billion U.S. recording industry, which has mostly followed consumers online, kicking and screaming every step of the way. It spent years fighting technologies for copying and distributing music. And it has been hampered from distributing music directly to consumers via the Internet by long-term relationships with bricks-and-mortar retailers who worried about losing their cut.

But as they've started to go online, some labels have discovered themselves hamstrung by complicated technology. If, say, the marketing department built a site for a band, it would have to unify multiple technology systems, including discussion forums, video players and e-commerce systems--and constantly update these hodge-podge systems with new content to regularly attract consumers. Expanding that process for an entire catalog seems Sisyphean.

The resulting delays and complexities have left the door wide for Apple (nyse: AAPL) to dominate the U.S. retail music market. While Apple legitimized buying music online by making the process simple for consumers, the music industry has railed against its insistence on sticking to a one-size fits all price of 99 cents per song for digital tracks in its iTunes store. Music companies see music as a market and want to be able to charge more for popular songs, but Forrester research analyst James McQuivey says Apple's core goal to sell iPods keeps it focused on boosting sales via cheaply priced music.

Now some record companies are plotting to take back some control of their industry and sell music--and concert tickets and merchandise--better than ever by managing bands' Web presences. "They recognize they're going to have to step up and take those reigns and drive the relationship a little bit," says McQuivey.

According to documents received by Forbes.com, Warner Music Group (nyse: WMG) has spent months negotiating with networking giant Cisco Systems (nasdaq: CSCO) to use a nascent technology called Cisco Eos to simplify the music company's management of a large catalog of band Web sites. Warner declined to comment.

Eos is a so-called technology platform that combines both networking technology and content management software. Cisco has been working on the technology for 18 months, building on software acquired when it bought the companies Tribe.net and FiveAcross in early 2007. Scott Brown, marketing manager for Cisco's Media Solutions Group, says the goal is to create an "interactive, personalized, community-based entertainment experience" for people--and an easily administered system to help media companies deliver content.

Cisco hopes Eos will simplify how media companies manage and distribute online content and develop social networking around it. Last October, it announced that the system was in an early form and that developers, along with Nascar.com and NHL.com, were trying it out. Cisco aimed to release the software widely in 2008. Since then, the company has been coy about how the technology is emerging--and who the first customers will be. Eos should become publicly available "shortly," Brown told Forbes.com this week.

While no deal is done, a source familiar with the strategy says a Warner music system built on an Eos platform is soon going into beta and could launch next year. The hope is that it will allow record labels to focus on managing the editorial content and e-commerce elements of band sites with fewer people and technology requirements than are currently used--particularly as it seeks to build more of these sites.

Would that put Warner in competition with the soon-to-launch MySpace Music--in which it owns a stake?

"The question is what experience does the user want," says Cisco's Brown. Not everyone wants to spend time on MySpace--some customers simply want to spend time on a site promoting their favorite artist. Indeed, he says, some people may not even want their entertainment, particularly music, locked into a single device like an iPod.

"Why have the entertainment experience completely dependent on a device? If it's all going over the network anyway, shouldn't you have a network to handle it?" Brown says.

Sounds like music to a record label's ears.

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